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Helping child speak non local language
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this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2023
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One more data point: I have a friend whose parents are Chinese, but she was born in an English speaking country. She never speaks Chinese when addressing her sister who speaks both languages well, but always speaks Chinese with her mother, whose English is quite limited.
So I guess the solution is to expose them to people who don't speak the local language, so they'll need to speak English to be understood. How feasible that is depends on your situation.
Yeah. I've tried to press that sometimes I don't understand when he speaks the local language. It's true because I used to not understand children in the local language, but I do now 🫣.
Honestly I think I need more non native friends with children.
Yeah, that would probably be ideal, or perhaps take the kid on vacation somewhere they'll get immersed. Watching media in your native language could also help, especially if you're in a country where dubbing is the norm and they don't get exposed to it organically.
In the meantime, you should probably take some pressure off. As you noted, your kids will learn English regardless, and if you keep speaking it they'll probably learn it faster than their peers and with less accents. If you push too hard they might start fighting it, which won't help their motivation at all.
Yeah. I was worried about the fighting against it thing. So far he seems to like speaking English, but just limited. I try to make it really cool that he speaks two languages. We also have a thing where he teaches me the local language and I teach him English, which is true since I'm not native in the local language.
Basically trying to balance pushing and being careful of being overbearing.